


The Pride of a Prince

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sadstuck, dirk's major issues with identity, jake's issues with communicating what he needs, warning: its a massive trainwreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all your other traits, underneath there lies one voracious pride that slices them all in half. One day, you know it will destroy the heart of you, but like the snake eating its tail, the awareness fuels it. And so, may your own soul turn, and crush itself to dust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pride of a Prince

You remember, once upon a time, needing him like you needed air to fill your lungs, like you needed a bandage to cover an open wound. You remember a time when you were broken, a rusty tinker toy that no longer worked, and you were trying your best to find the will to mend yourself, only to find that it was not there, and you held no motive to fix your gaping flaws, your broken soul. Not even for them, and not even for him. Jake loves you, you think. Through the leaving and the tears pouring from his cheeks as he'd screamed your flaws at you, he loved you, and he'd told you a million times, if you'd left him he'd surely die, he wouldn't know what he'd do without you, you were his safe haven, you were his comfort blanket, and with that, you'd surely be his downfall. Avoiding you was something he'd taken to doing when he was uncomfortable, through that you'd adapted. Molding with change was one thing that came naturally, shifting with the times and trying your best to keep your claws hooked deep into various small fissures when the tides began to turn. 

Jake, you learned, was the opposite. It was all routine for him, the honeymoon phase, overstimulation, the way he'd cry and break down when he would ask you, how could you be so cold, so stiff, so stubborn the list went on. Repeat again, no effort put into trying to mend the ever winding dance. At your core, despite the messages or the leaking desperation that came with when you feared him leaving, at your very core, there was a vicious, boiling pride that you could never let go of. A pride you hated, but a ferocious pride that kept you styling and preening at your hair, keeping your shades completely clean, because for all the disdain you held for your very being, the disdain was directed into you, centered into yourself, and you may despise yourself and your traits, but at the same time, trying to fix them felt like giving in. A plethora of reasons lay beneath your never changing, but above all, there was your fear, and there was your vehement pride.

Fear, that you would cease to exist, the you of now would fade. Worn out as your identity may be, it was yours, mangled and scrapped together it may be, but something it wasn't was unfamiliar. Changing was stepping into uncharted, uncontrolled lands, changing meant abandoning this persona, and after you abandon yourself, after you grow and change, then what would become of you, really? Would you fade away, to be replaced by another version, your brain but a different core? No, you were far too stubborn. The fires within your heart burnt black and smelled of charred flesh, reeked with the sickly aroma of sulfur and metal, but you did not have it within yourself to douse it out, to change the coals and rake them away to give new fuel to your passions, change the oil that kept your elaborate mechanisms running. Not that, never that. You were far too scared of what would become of this self, you'd run yourself into the ground and spit up sickly, gruesome oil, you'd wear yourself dead and shut down before you tried to claw your way out of the pits of the hell that you yourself lit inside you.

And pride, pride that outweighed the fear and drove you forward in your motives and ways. A deep hatred for yourself, but pride lay within the hatred, the comfort taken in that you were self aware, you had knowledge of your deep faults and your twisted mind. You were self aware, you could see yourself, repeating through the underlying vanity, even taking it from your own abhorrent loathing of everything to do with your key traits. You siphoned that pride from what you could manage, your ability to stay grounded, your sound thinking, your rational, it all intertwined in your ways of thought, you were logical, therefore you had the ability to see that from a sound standpoint, you were completely repugnant. And you couldn't change, you knew why you couldn't change, you saw your own disgusting pride taken in your awareness, and you saw it feeding it. Like a snake devouring its own tail, you devoured your hatred, fed it to your pride which in turn began the cycle once again, for you hated your own unstoppable vanity.

You took pride in the way that you knew, one day, you'd end it. Jake was avoidant, and in the end, the idea fixated that you hated yourself more than anyone could love you (it was uplifting, disgusting, vainglorious in the knowledge). He loved, he kept stubbornly refusing to let go of the fact that he couldn't love everyone, he tried too hard and gave up too much. A sanctuary you were, yes, but also the looming threat and the wolf hunting him down. 

When you told him it was over, placed a hand on his chest when he'd done the classic move repeated over and over (the kiss in the films to avoid any speaking on the parts of the leads, back to the honeymoon phase), he'd looked shocked, confused, and then, you'd ended it. You'd yelled at him, how you weren't a robot, when he saw you as such, you weren't lying when you'd said it'd hurt, it'd hurt like a knife to the gut, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough agony that you'd be driven to change just for him, you'd gone into the relationship for yourself, unlike he had down initially. You'd been furious, your blood boiled when you told him all the desperation and worry you'd gone through, but deep down, it'd never been enough to make you try. Words spoken, never said, just as during that tearing of your relationship, you never said anything about loving him. You didn't know if you did, all you knew was the complete and utter devastation, the ruin and the heartbreak on his face as you'd pointed out his flaws. He'd change, he had said.

He'd change, he'd change, he'd be better, he wouldn't be a disappointment. He had fallen to his knees sobbing, heaving as you'd turned and left, didn't get up to follow you when you walked out and that became a grasped straw of justification for this, for hurting someone you were close to like this. Jake at his core, wanted to make those he cared for happy, and avoiding as he'd get, he'd come back, he'd tried at least a little. He'd said he'd change. The next morning, when you come back to get your things, you don't turn back. You angrily shrug him off when he tries to apologize for leaving, and you turn around and ignore him, shoulders hunched as you walk out. 

Pride. A driving factor in your leaving. Fear. The factor that won't let you change. You won't let go of the pride, and your pride will never let you return to the embrace of your friend, even when he'd accept you with open, welcoming arms. He'd be glad just to have you back again as his very best friend, yet you cannot turn back. 

So you don't.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a deconstructing of the many fics I've seen with Dirk as the sort of love martyr to Jake's sort of on and off romance dealings. Dirk has a lot of pride that's overlooked because of the self loathing, so I thought that I'd write a fic, just to show that self loathing doesn't mean he doesn't have a dangerous amount of pride that just as much destroyed him and Jake. I might continue it with a Jake part/ them developing maybe, I don't know.


End file.
